Howard Jacobson, Man Booker Prize Winner, On Receiving the Award

The U.K.’s most prestigious literary award — the Man Booker Prize for Fiction — was given this week to 68-year-old Howard Jacobson for “The Finkler Question,” a book often described as a comic novel.

Jacobson’s victory set off much debate in the U.K. media about whether Booker judges have overlooked funny books in the past. Jacobson himself has twice before reached the “long list” for the prize -– in 2002 for “Who’s Sorry Now” and in 2006 for “Kalooki Nights” -– but not the “short list” before this year.

The chair of the Booker judges called Jacobson’s book “very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle.” The book follows two old school friends, Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler, and their former teacher, Libor Sevcik. Libor and Sam are widowers, while Treslove has had a checkered history with women. One night, they have dinner together at Libor’s apartment, and reminisce about “a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it,” according to the book’s publisher, Bloomsbury.

Speakeasy talked with Jacobson about the comic novel, about his dalliance in television and about the oft-drawn comparisons to Philip Roth.

The Wall Street Journal: What inspired you to write this book?

I met a man at age nearly 90 who had just lost his wife after 60 years of marriage. And his descriptions of his grief affected me powerfully, with dread as much as anything else. Because I dread grief. I’ve always dreaded grief. I’ve always dreaded how I would handle grief when grief comes. And meeting this man put me in mind of my fears.

There’s been debate about whether your book is one of the few comic novel to win the Booker.

Lots of novels that you could call comic have indeed won the Booker Prize before. But the Booker did go through a period –- the Man Booker did go through a period — in which there seemed to be a certain solemnification. Maybe it wasn’t the Man Booker. Maybe culture went through a brief period of solemnification. And people had the idea that the Man Booker was a certain sort of book, and in the main, it wasn’t funny.

Being called a comic novelist drives me around the bend because what people seem to mean by comic is not what I mean by comic. Because what I mean by comic is not the opposite to serious. Comedy makes you laugh, but if it’s good comedy, as I hope mine is, it makes you laugh at the most desperate things, not at the easy things. So anything that associates comedy with levity, I oppose.

What are some of the other great comic novelists?

Kingsley Amis is one that comes to mind…Martin Amis, for example, who’s been one of our funniest novelists, has never been shortlisted on the Man Booker prize –- except for one novel he wrote that wasn’t funny at all. But his father, Kingsley Amis, the old devil won it in his 60s, a little bit younger than me, and it was assumed he never would, and it was assumed I never would, for the same reason.

I think what made it difficult for Martin Amis, and indeed for Kingsley, his father, before him, and what has made it difficult for me many a time, is the particular nature of our voice — strong, aggressive, provocative, sometimes even pugnacious, masculine voices. It’s that element of comedy -– not the fact of funniness — that’s been the problem.

I think it’s fair to say you published most of your well-known novels after age 50.

Not quite right. My first novel, which for many years was my best-selling novel, was published when I was 40. A book called “Coming from Behind.” What happened was, I published a little clutch of books, and then I got the chance to do a lot of television programs, and I rather liked making these television programs. Not least because I felt that writing books, writing the kind of novels I wrote, was like banging one’s head against a brick wall to a degree, for some of the reasons we’ve just been discussing. So I moved into television.

For most of the ’90s I did some television — serious documentaries, based on some [non-fiction books that I wrote]. A non-fiction book about Australia. A non-fiction book about my Jewish roots called “Roots Schmoots,” which was then made into a television program. And a big series called “Seriously Funny,” about my preoccupations with the comic, which was also a book. So there was not much novel-writing in that period. Then in the 2000s, I suddenly come strong with a lot of novels. I hit a fertile patch.

How much are you influenced by Philip Roth, to whom you’re often compared?

The comparison is staggering because I have the utmost admiration for him. I think he’s as good as it gets as a novelist. He’s written some of the funniest novels I’ve ever read, and he’s written some of the grandest novels I’ve ever read. And his output now is fantastic –- a man of his age producing these novels. Fantastic. Not enough praise in the world for Philip Roth. But in fact I didn’t know an awful lot about Philip Roth when I began writing, because I was an old-fashioned English lit man, and as far as I was concerned, literature was English literature, and I looked askance at the Americans and thought, no, that’s all a bit kind of flash and modern for me. So I can’t cite him as an influence on my early work, in fairness. And I’m not sure how much of an influence he is now.

The Guardian published an interesting blog post that gave book sales for all past Booker winners. “Life of Pi” tops the list with £9.4 million. Can you trump that?

It’s early days…apparently the sales [of “The Finkler Question”] are going very, very well. At one point it was number one on Amazon, which is staggering, and it’s number one on Kindle here — all quickly in the last couple of days. So who knows what might happen? I’m just happy to have some readers, you know. It’s been very, very hard to get readers. And it was getting harder to get readers. And the wonderful thing about this, when all else is said and done, is it gives you some readers.